Art Pope

Art Pope is the president and vice-chairman of the board of directors for Variety Wholesalers Inc., and a director of the right-wing group Americans for Prosperity, which organized the Tax Day Tea Parties across the country, and which organized "town hall" opposition to health care reform in 2009. He is a member of the board of directors of the John Locke Foundation, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association.

An investigation by Facing South also found that Pope has close ties to the Koch Brothers, as one of four national directors of the Koch-founded political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. In addition, Pope is a director and board chair of a family foundation, the Pope Foundation, which has steered millions to conservative thinks tanks in North Carolina and nationally that have worked closely with the Koch network to manufacture doubt about global warming, including his own John Locke Foundation.

Overall, the 2010 Facing South analysis of tax records found that a foundation chaired by Art Pope supplies about 90 percent of the income of leading conservative nonprofits in North Carolina.

Background
Pope, a graduate of Duke University School of Law, is a member of the North Carolina Bar Association. He has worked as "special counsel to the governor in 1985, running for the lieutenant governorship in 1992, and being chosen as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1992 and 1996."

Pope was also the founder of the right-wing, free market John Locke Foundation, which accepts money from the tobacco industry.

Climate change denial
A 2010 investigation by the Institute for Southern Studies found that Pope had begun funneling money to ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofits that use it to run attack ads, primarily directed at politicians who have played a key role in addressing climate change in the state. Facing South's analysis of tax return data found that Art Pope's family foundation, the Pope Foundation, had made large contributions to the same network of climate skeptic groups as the Koch Brothers from 1997 to 2008 -- more than $24.1 million in all. Many of the funds went to the John Locke Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank based in Raleigh, N.C. that was created in 1990 to promote the idea of limited government. Pope provides 80 percent of the organization's funding -- $16.9 million from 1997 to 2008 -- and sits on its board of directors. The John Locke Foundation has been one of the most outspoken voices of climate denial, particularly in North Carolina - in 2007, North Carolina passed Senate Bill 3 to adopt a minimum requirement for the use of renewable energy sources by investor-owned electric utilities. The bill requires that 12.5 percent of all electricity sold in the state by 2020 must come from renewable sources or improved efficiency. The John Locke Foundation would like to do away with it altogether, according to the group's 2010 climate agenda.

Pope's foundation is also a backer of the Civitas Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its 501(c)(4) sister group, Civitas Action. Between 2005 and 2009, the Pope Foundation has accounted for about 99 percent of the Civitas Institute's foundation income. Pope was also a founder of Civitas Action, which has raised nearly $265,000 since August -- more than 70 percent of that directly from Pope's company. In October 2010, Civitas Action spent $5,750 on mailers targeting North Carolina House Speaker Joe Hackney and Senate leader Marc Basnight, Democrats who have been supportive of efforts to address global warming. Hackney led the state's climate change commission for a time before appointing in his place Rep. Pricey Harrison (D), one of the legislature's strongest environmental advocates. Basnight has talked about his concern that global warming and associated sea rise could inundate the region and supports a move to clean energy sources. Frances De Luca, president of the Civitas Institute and the former state director of the North Carolina chapter of Americans for Prosperity, has said more mailers are planned.

Running against 15-term Hackney is Cathy Wright, a nursing instructor who's also worked as a lobbyist for medical groups. Her campaign manager did not respond to Facing South's request for information about her position on climate change. But Wright does say she's a member of the Conservative Womens Forum, which promotes a book calling global warming a "scam" and is critical of clean energy solutions from cap-and trade legislation to wind power to the promotion of compact-fluorescent light bulbs. Additionally, her campaign website links directly to both the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute. Basnight's opponent is Hood Richardson, a retired minerals geologist and commissioner for Beaufort County, N.C. Richardson calls global warming a "problem that has since been debunked as based on faulty science." He also criticizes Basnight for helping create the state climate change commission, saying it will "severely harm businesses." He cites the John Locke Foundation for his assertions.

Tea Party Funding
A 2010 Facing South analysis found that a family foundation led by Art Pope has given the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) over $1.3 million since 2004, making it the group's second-largest institutional backer. Pope also sits on AFP's four-person board of directors. Americans for Prosperity has key leadership roles in the Tea Party Patriots movement. AFP delivered "Home Organizing" kits to Tea Party activists and sponsored dozens of trainings at local and national Tea Party events. Americans for Prosperity also works closely with the Tea Party Express. AFP called for a national Tax Day Tea Party in Washington, D.C. in October 2009 to channel the movement's energy. The N.C. branch of Americans for Prosperity is behind N.C. Tax Day Tea Party 2010, an effort to coordinate Tea Party protests across the state.

Since spring 2009, staff of the Pope's Civitas Institute, which receives nearly all of its funding from Pope's family foundation, and the John Locke Foundation, which receives over 80 percent of its funding from Pope's foundation, have spoken at dozens of Tea Party rallies. Together with the N.C. chapter of Americans for Prosperity, in May 2010 the Civitas Institute organized two "Tea Party Summits" -- one in Hickory ("Tea Party Summit West"), and another in Wilmington ("East"). According to the website, the events aimed to "channel the tea party energy" towards the groups' favorite conservatives causes, like "forced annexation" and cutting taxes. Both the East and West Tea Party summits in North Carolina featured a "State of the People Luncheon" led by the Civitas Institute. They also included a Citizen Watchdog/Investigative Journalism training led by Civitas staff.

There questions about whether Pope's organizations are overstepping its legal bounds with these activites. The Civitas Institute and Locke Foundation are classified as 501(c)(3) nonprofits by the Internal Revenue Service, which forbids partisan political engagement and electioneering. Americans for Prosperity is a 501(c)(4) group, which can support or oppose candidates, as long as that's not its primary purpose.

Funding campaigns against moderate Republicans
In 2006, the Raleigh News and Observer reported that Pope "has created other organizations to sway public opinion, monitor the legislature, develop grass-roots political efforts and bring court challenges" and that he had spent "millions of dollars on a network whose purpose is to move North Carolina to the political right." His goal was to purge the North Carolina state House of Representatives of Republican moderates. According to journalist Rob Christensen, Pope "created two new tax-exempt organizations. The Republican Legislative Majority of North Carolina was bankrolled with $260,000 in contributions from Variety Wholesalers. A Pope-formed state chapter of a national group, Americans for Prosperity, contributed more than $200,000 ... The Pope effort helped defeat Republican Reps. Rex Baker of King, Keith Williams of Jacksonville, Michael Gorman of New Bern and Michael Decker of Forsyth County. Pope came within a whisker of knocking off Morgan and Rep. Rick Eddins of Raleigh."

Pope started out by financing a network of conservative think tanks, but in latter years has expanded his role to that of a conservative political enforcer, spending hundreds of thousands of his own money to unseat moderate Republican legislators.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Americans for Prosperity
 * Astroturf
 * Grassroots
 * John Locke Foundation
 * Patients First

External articles

 * John Grooms, "Unhealthy lies and the truth about healthcare reform", Creative Loafing, August 18, 2009.